Thursday, August 12, 2021
8:15 p.m.
Amphitheater
Rossen Milanov, conductor
Carlos Simon (b. 1986): Elegy: A Cry from the Grave [5']
Bizet/Shchedrin (1838–1875/b. 1932): Carmen Suite for Strings and Percussion [45']
This program is made possible by the Boyle Family Fund for the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, the Heitzenrater Family Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra Fund, and the Mary Peterson Chalfant Fund for the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.
Vahn Armstrong, Acting Concertmaster—28
Mischakoff Taylor Concertmaster Chair
Ming Gao, Acting Asst. Concertmaster—27
Adrienne Finet—5
Amanda Gates—20
David Hult—42
Olga D. Kaler—27
Liana Koteva Kirvan—3
Lenelle Morse—29
Erica Robinson—33
Anton Shelepov—5
Marian Tanau—28
Diane Bruce, Principal—41
Simon Lapointe, Assistant—11
Cheryl Bintz—31
Barbara Berg—42
Karen Lord-Powell—13
Jonathan Richards—5
Lara Sipols—19
Christopher Fischer, Principal—6
Karl Pedersen, Acting Asst.—5
Cynthia Frank—25
Kayleigh Miller—5
Jennifer Stahl—25
Eva Stern—20
Jolyon Pegis, Principal—27
Lars Kirvan, Assistant—5
Igor Gefter—4
Daryl Goldberg—35
Owen Lee, Principal—9
P.J. Cinque, Assistant—1
Kieran Hanlon— 1
Caitlyn Kamminga—25
Bernard Lieberman—45
David Rosi—28
Richard Sherman, Principal—32
Rita and Dunbar VanDerveer Symphony Principal Chair for Flute
Kathryn Levy (piccolo)—45
Hougo Suza, Acting Principal Oboe (season sub)
Anna Mattix, Acting 2nd (season sub)
Eli Eban, Principal—28
Daniel Spitzer (bass)—7
Jeffrey Robinson, Principal—17
Sean Gordon—3
Benjamin Atherholt (contra)—5
Roger Kaza, Principal—19
William Bernatis, Assistant—23
Donna Dolson—37
Mark Robbins—37
Peter Lindblom, Assistant—29
Leslie Linn—23
John Marcellus, Principal—42
Eric Lindblom (bass)—15
Christopher Wolf—5
Frederick Boyd, Principal—35
Brian Kushmaul, Principal—27
Thomas Blanchard, Assistant—24
Pedro Fernandez—3
Brian Kushmaul—27
Beth Robinson, Principal—47
Yan Izquierdo, violin
Scott Jackson, violin
Edna Pierce, viola
Maximiliano Oppeltz, cello
Amy Nickler, bass
Peter Anderegg—5
Stuart Chafetz, Principal—24
Jan Eberle, Principal—36
Gabriel Pegis—13
Brian Reagin, Concertmaster—24
Charles Waddell—39
Substitute and Extra Musicians
The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra would like to acknowledge and thank its many substitute and extra musicians for their service.
Manager
Marian Tanau, Personnel Manager
Librarians
Lara Sipols, Principal
Adrienne Finet, Associate Principal
Dent Williamson, Emeritus
Administration
Steven Slaff, Managing Director
Matt Hart, Stage Manager
Notes
Numbers after names indicate years as members of the CSO prior to 2021.
by David B. Levy
The CSO Pre-concert Lecture Series and Program Notes are made possible thanks to the Carl and Lee Chaverin Fund.
An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave
Carlos Simon
American composer Carlos Simon was born in Washington, D.C. in 1986 and has emerged as a leading voice among contemporary African-American musicians. A faculty member of Georgetown University, Simon has also taught at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges in Atlanta. He is a recipient of the 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence, the highest honor sponsored by the Sphinx Organization which supports gifted young Black and Latinx musicians. His album, MY ANCESTEOR’S GIFT was released in 2018 on the Navona label. Trained at Morehouse College (BA), Georgia State and New York University (MA), and the University of Michigan (DMA), Simon has received numerous commissions from prestigious institutions, including the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, to name but a few. He has composed music in a wide variety of genres, including An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave (2015), originally composed for string quartet, but also adapted for string orchestra or saxophone quartet.
The composer wrote the following program note regarding An Elegy: A Cry from the Grave:
This piece is an artistic reflection dedicated to those who have been murdered wrongfully by an oppressive power; namely Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and Michael Brown. The stimulus for composing piece came as a result of prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch announcing that a selected jury had decided not to indict police officer, Daren Wilson after fatally shooting an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The evocative nature of the piece draws on strong lyricism and a lush harmonic charter. A melodic idea is played in all the voices of the ensemble at some point of the piece either whole or fragmented. The recurring ominous motif represents the cry of those struck down unjustly in this country. While the predominant essence of the piece is sorrowful and contemplative, there are moments of extreme hope represented by bright consonant harmonies.
No doubt that Simon would include many additional names, including George Floyd, given the tragic events that have transpired since the work’s composition.
Carmen Suite for Strings and Percussion
Georges Bizet/Rodion Shchedrin
French composer Georges was born in Paris on October 25, 1838 and died in Bougival (near Paris) on June 3, 1875. Although his compositional output was wide ranging, he is best known and loved for the opera, Carmen, which stands as one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the repertoire. In 1967, the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin (b. 1932) created a reimagined Carmen Suite as music for a one-act ballet at the request of his wife, the dancer Maya Plisetskaya. The ballet premiered on April 20 of that year at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. The Carmen Suite is scored for string orchestra and percussion, including timpani and a large assortment of instruments.
Bizet’s 1874 opera, Carmen, is, beyond a shadow of doubt, one of the most tuneful works of its kind ever composed, making it also one of the most popular of all operas. Symphony concert goers have enjoyed its music primarily through the two suites arranged in the 1880s by Ernst Guiraud. Many of its arias have been the basis for innumerable arrangements and sets of virtuoso variations for a variety of instruments. Even those listeners unfamiliar with the opera know much of its music as it has become a mainstay of popular culture.
Due to the music’s popularity, there have been countless adaptations of arias and instrumental passages from Bizet’s colorful opera—a work awash in Spanish idioms. Among the adaptations is the one made by Russian composer, Rodion Shchedrin, resulting in an iconoclastic reinterpretation of Carmen to fit the ideas of the Cuban choreographer, Alberto Alonso. The piquancy of its instrumentation—at times quirky and witty—offers listeners “old wine in a new bottle.” The Carmen Suite has taken on a life of its own in the concert hall, separate from the ballet stage.
Curiously, Shchedrin was not the first composer Plisetskaya turned to in order to “compose” or reinterpret Bizet’s music to fit Alonso’s scenario. Dmitri Shostakovich was offered first dibs on the project, but declined, feeling that those who loved Bizet’s original would be offended and disappointed. Aram Khachaturian, when approached by the Plitetskaya, suggested that he was not needed given that the ballerina had, after all, a composer living at home. Shchedrin held Bizet’s opera in high esteem, realizing that he needed to come up with something new, making it in his words, “a totally modern combination.” He felt that his task was to make “himself . . . not an equal partner [with Bizet] at least something above the level of arranger.” Shchedrin, as a result, felt at liberty to play with Bizet’s music, not only with fresh colors (strings and percussion), but also reinterpreting and modernizing the all-too-familiar music itself.
The result was a set of thirteen dance episodes that follow the basic plot of Bizet’s music based upon the libretto of Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, which itself was based on the Prosper Mérimée’s novella. Not surprisingly, many critics have considered Alonso’s balletic reinterpretation of Carmen, along with Shchedrin’s score, to border on the sacrilegious. The best advice one can give to an audience today is to keep ones ears and minds open to enjoy Shchedrin’s “totally modern combination.”